Linux Mint Fails in 4K

It was running Linux Mint 18 and recently Linux Mint 19. And this was working fine, except recently I upgraded the monitor to a Samsung 40″ 4K TV – UN40MU6300FXZA. I found the Refurbished TV for about $290 for sale by Walmart a couple of months ago. This is quite a good price for this Samsung 6300 level TV.

Since I use this mini system to display photos and game screen shots a large high-rez display is just the thing. However, Linux Mint has never supported the display correctly.

As you can see, when in 4K [3840×2160], the display is sliced up and repeated across the screen. It works fine in 1920×1080 mode on Linux. From all the reading of the processor and TV specs, it looked like it should work fine and when I use a long HDMI cable to plug the TV into a Windows 10 system with a GTX 1060 card, it works fine too in 4K.

After spending a couple of days on various forums trying to understand and fix the problem on the BRIX with no luck, I had the bright idea of just trying Windows 10 directly on the system. So I made a Windows 10 install Thumb drive, removed the M.2 Sata, to avoid messing up the Linux Install with Windows 10, and installed Windows 10 on the 60GB SATA SSD. Worked like a charm and brought the monitor right up in 4K without problems.

The choice is the Denon AVR S930H – All the video support and way more Audio support than I need. My speakers are only 5.1 and this one supports 7.2 or as they are saying these days 5.2.2. But I needed this level of support to get HDR10 / Dolby Vision which my TV supports.

Imagine for a moment that we have a receiver from 2013 – pre 4K – that contains an HDMI switch. Now imagine that one buys almost any TV today – almost all of them support 4K. Now imagine that one purchases something that produces video – BluRay player, XBox Console, Playstation, even a modern set top box. Most of these support 4K video.

So what happens if the EDID from the 4K TV passes unchanged through the NR1504 from 2013 to the video source that can produce 4K? Well the source happily produces 4K video and the NR1504 cannot pass it. Black screen? Apparently.

Was the Marantz 1504 never modifying the EDID? Or did it just start not modifying the EDID? Or did the Linux computer get a new driver that was willing to produce 4K video?

I hooked up an HD monitor to the NR1504 and hooked the Linux box back up to the Media input and voila. Everything works fine, of course.

It seems clear that in this world of ubiquitous 4K sources and displays, the Marantz NR1504 needs to be modifying the EDID or producing one of it’s own to continue to work.

I’ve used the display settings in Linux to use HD only and that works fine with the TV, but when I plugged it back into the NR1504 it still didn’t work. Oh well. Time for a new Receiver that gets 4K. But at least I can use the Linux system by plugging it directly into the TV and setting it to HD.

I’ve had a Marantz NR1504 for a couple of years at least. As you can see, it was released in 2013 and is no longer made – according to Marantz Tech Support.

My Marantz NR1504 Receiver recently took an update over the internet. Automatically. And the next time my Linux Mint System booted, the receiver refused to pass video from the Linux system. Dish Hopper and Sony Bluray player work fine. I thought the problem was the Linux Kernel Update that I’d done, so I pulled the machine out of the Entertainment system and attached another monitor to it thinking that I would need to re-install Linux Mint 18.2, but it came up fine with the other monitor. Also, I’ve swapped HDMI cable and used other Receiver input ports, and when the Linux system is attached directly to the Vizio Pseries TV, it works fine, in FREAKING 4K no less. Of course the NR1504 only supports HD, not 4K. In 4K the print is so small on my 65″ TV that I can barely see it. But it works fine and Youtube is also fine.

So what if you want to listen to headphones in this modern HDMI connected world?

There were some old converters, but they only decoded 2.1 sound. Here’s one that decodes 2.1 or 5.1 sound. 2.1 sound is not going to be enough. Most broadcasts these days are 5.1 or 7.1 and most Set Top boxes and BluRay can be dumbed down to 5.1, but probably not 2.1.